Did the dark energy always have a large Compton wavelength?

Until now all well-studied dark energy models proposed have very large Compton wavelengths, ${\lambda }_c>100Mpc$ at all time and hence show no clustering on small scales. Evidence against this would disfavour both $\mathrm{\Lambda }$CDM and quintessence. We show however, that large ${\lambda }_c$ is actually favoured by current CMB, LSS and SN1a data by comparing quintessence with a condensate scenario with the same background dynamics. The condensate scenario has a very small ${\lambda }_c$ before making a transition to negative pressure and large ${\lambda }_c$ and therefore exhibits a rich CMB phenomenology which roughly interpolates between $\mathrm{\Lambda }$CDM and flat CDM models.